US sports columnist: papers are dying

In what is considered to be a bombshell announcement in the US journalistic world, the Chicago Sun-Times's star sports columnist, Jay Mariotti, has resigned because "the profession is dying." Mariotti said he decided to quit to pursue opportunities on the web after covering the Olympics in Beijing because newspapers are in serious trouble, and he did not want to go down with the ship. "I don't think either paper [Sun-Times or Chicago Tribune] is going to survive," he said.

Sun-Times editor Michael Cooke hit back: "That's Jay's opinion. He has plenty of them... that's typical of Jay to throw a bomb on the way out of a place that cared for him, nurtured him, paid him well for 17 years." (Via CBS 2)